An historically pungent press conference occurred at the Japan National Press Club in Tokyo on October 26. Several of the co-inventors of the wasabi alarm, joined by several of their business associates, discussed the importance of their work and the import of being awarded the 2011 Ig Nobel Prize in chemistry. [The prize was awarded, on September 29 in the gala ceremony at Harvard, to Makoto Imai, Naoki Urushihata, Hideki Tanemura, Yukinobu Tajima, Hideaki Goto, Koichiro Mizoguchi and Junichi Murakami of JAPAN, for determining the ideal density of airborne wasabi (pungent horseradish) to awaken sleeping people in case of a fire or other emergency, and for applying this knowledge to invent the wasabi alarm]

You can see all the action—all one hour and fourteen minutes of it— in this video. The most visually exciting part, the demonstration, begins around the 39-minute mark. The discussion is, of course, in Japanese.